Sounding Off: Cars a bigger problem than boards

March 10, 2011|By Kirk Morgan

Forget the skateboarders — look out for the cars ripping up and down our street.

We live on a steep part of Temple Hills and cars hit 40, 50, 60 mph past our house on a regular basis. Many folks do drive reasonably, and we thank you, but we've had three accidents within 100 feet of our driveway in the last five years.

You know our house — our trash can says, "Please Slow Down."

I wanted it to say, "Please Slow Down, Relax and Enjoy Life, You Over-Caffeinated-Texting-While-You-Drive-Lagunatic in Your High Performance Car," but there wasn't enough room on the can, and Coast Hardware didn't have all the block letters anyway.

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Pulling out of our driveway is scary. We look both ways and pull out when it's clear, but in the time it takes to pull out, cars are already upon you, flipping their high beams (and flipping other things too, apparently just being neighborly).

Never once in the 12 years we've lived here have we had a single kid come to trick-or-treat because no parent lets their little kids near this autobahn. Oh, and leave the little skateboard grommets and bicyclists alone. Share the road!

It's actually kind of exciting to see the kids bombing down the hill, and I wish I had the guts and the talent to do it. In some other place and time they'd be testing themselves getting chased by bulls or hunting lions or working for the cartel or waving an AK-47 while screaming for jihad. In Laguna they only bomb hills.

But if you, my fine neighbors, feel righteously entitled to race through this residential neighborhood and endanger my family's lives, why do you care if they do it on skateboards or bikes?

Ask yourself this: How fast do you want people to drive past your house? Slow down and stop on by sometime and have a cold frosty one with us.